This invention relates to a forward part of an aircraft, also called the nose cone, comprising a landing gear well housing a forward landing gear.
The invention is applicable to all types of aircraft.
Many developments have been made to aircraft nose cones to optimize its mass, volume, cost, safety, ease of fabrication, maintenance, etc. One example of such a nose cone is disclosed in documents FR 2 910 875 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,784,736.
Despite the existence of many constructions, the environment of the nose cone landing gear well can still be optimized, particularly to distribute forces introduced by the front landing gear breaker strut.
Normally, the landing gear well is made by means of stiffened panels forming a housing isolated from the pressure, the well being surrounded by a network of frames that stiffen the fuselage frames. With this type of design, the panels forming the landing gear well have to be large to be able to resist forces from the forward landing gear, and particularly reactions from the breaker strut.
This creates disadvantages in terms of mass and volume, and makes it necessary to use a metallic material to manufacture panels of the landing gear well. Furthermore, the solution described above usually induces high mechanical loads in the forward zone of the windshield, which are obviously undesirable.
Furthermore, the nose cone can also be optimised so as to facilitate access by operators working on fabrication/handling of this very densely occupied part.
In particular, the high pressure zone located above the landing gear well that will contain a large amount of instruments/equipment, is often difficult to access for operators.